Date:         Thu, 6 Apr 2006 16:33:47 -0400
Sender:       ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
From:         Jim Ulrich <ulrich at duq dot edu>
Subject:      Re: Can we lead ourselves?

Great thread! Thanks for the stimulating questions and perspectives so far. I, like Richard, Nathan, and others, appreciate one of the concerns that gave rise to this dialogue – namely, that if leadership can refer to anything and everything a person does, it tends to trivialize the study and practice of leadership. I will return to this, but first some thoughts:

Charlie Manz and Chris Neck have already spawned an emerging literature on self-leadership. Yammarino et al. (2005) recently summarized it this way:  “Self-management and self-leadership are a set of strategies that an individual uses to influence and improve his/her own behavior and actions. To the extent that self-management and self-leadership can be encouraged and used as an employee empowerment practice, then supervisors and leaders can be eliminated, reassigned, or engaged in other important organizational activities” (p. 900, citing Markham & Markham, 1995 & 1998). Three categories of self-leadership strategies have been proposed: behavior-focused, natural reward, and constructive thought pattern. There’s even an instrument for measuring self-leadership that has been tested and revised (Houghton & Neck, 2002), and a few recent dissertations have used or studied the revised questionnaire.

My own starting point for thinking about self-leadership lies not so much in a concern for self-efficacy, empowerment, and organizational effectiveness as it does in facilitating change and enabling human transformation – beginning with the individual but including the organization. The only way I can really make sense of the notion of self-leadership, however, is to posit that we each have “multiple selves.” This need not lead us to an exploration of multiple personalities (!), but it does suggest we have and can construct multiple identities over time. I am aware and can differentiate, for example, an “actual” self and an “ideal” self. Quinn (2000) suggests that publicly acknowledging the gap between these two (he calls it “embracing the hypocritical self”) is an effective strategy for leading others in organizational change.

Staying for the moment at the level of the individual, I think it makes perfect sense to envision multiple, “possible selves” (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Self-leadership, then, could be the processes by which I bring into reality one or more of these possible selves (e.g., a thinner me, a more compassionate me, a better teacher, etc.). As an aside, I think that the kind of self-management and self-leadership that Manz, Neck and others are talking about - given that it is situated in the context of self-managed or empowered teams, is perhaps aimed more at helping people become more effective followers. That is, the “vision” for self-leadership derives more from organizational goals – to the extent that the individual “buys into” them, than it originates with the individual. Still, even my visions for myself are situated in a larger social context that I and others co-construct together, though I primarily initiate them. (Do I want to be a better teacher in the eyes of my students, my peers, and/or my boss? How I frame the context of my vision affects my choice of strategies to realize such a nuanced "ideal self.")

I also find it useful to differentiate self-management from self-leadership, following the similar distinction made in supervisory management contexts. If the fundamental ethos of management is one of control, stability and predictability, then for me self-management includes notions of self-discipline, self-efficacy, managing one’s emotions, and the like. Self-leadership, then, would be what we do to stretch ourselves, the strategies we devise to realize our possible selves, and what we do to create for ourselves “far-from-equilibrium” conditions (to use systems language).

One possible way to avoid trivializing self-leadership could be to emphasize so-called "second-order" change - qualitative, irreversible, paradigm-shifting, etc. (see Levy, 1986). Yet a curious thing, I find, is that a small change in one level of a system (e.g., an individual) – when aligned artfully, at the right moment in time, with critical factors in larger systems (team, organization, etc.), can have huge impacts that we would otherwise attribute to “leadership.” I may be quite accustomed to telling the truth, and telling the truth represents no change to me personally, yet when I tell the truth in a whistle-blowing context, major transformation can result. So, while I find it fascinating to examine self-leadership at the level of the individual, we probably can never fully appreciate or understand it apart from a larger context.

A colleague of mine here teaches a course called “Leadership: Starting from Self” in which students view leadership from a social constructionist perspective: in “authoring” the narrative of one’s life, we can re-interpret our past and place it in service of a desired future vision. Moreover, collectively we can create and realize a shared story that deviates from past trajectories or current plot lines, to create the organization we want. (“We were a ‘product company,’ but now we’re a ‘value-adding product and service company.’”) Is this not shared, collaborative leadership that re-creates personal and organizational identities? Yet I contend the “starting from” aspect of the title is an illusion. We may think organizational change originates from the individual, yet each actor brings to the moment a tradition, a collective past, a socially-informed consciousness that shapes one’s small and big decisions alike.

Do these ways of framing self-leadership resonate with others?

Jim

References

Houghton, J. D., & Neck, C. P. (2002). The revised self-leadership questionnaire: Testing a hierarchical factor structure for self-leadership. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 17(7/8), 672-691.

Kolb, D. A., & Boyatzis, R. E. (1970). Goal-setting and self-directed behavior change. Human Relations, 23(5), 439-457.

Levy, A. (1986). Second-order planned change: Definition and conceptualization. Organizational Dynamics, 15(1) 5-20.

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954-969.

Quinn, R. E. (2000). Change the world: How ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Yammarino, F. J., Dionnea, S. D., Chuna, J. U., & Dansereaub, F. (2005). Leadership and levels of analysis: A state-of-the-science review. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(6), 879-919.

Jim Wolford-Ulrich, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Team Leader, Leadership Faculty

School of Leadership and Professional Advancement

Duquesne University

Pittsburgh, PA 15282

Phone: 412-396-1640

Fax: 412-396-4711

E-mail: ulrich at duq dot edu

Web: http://www.leadership.duq.edu/

Bio: http://www.leadership.duq.edu/home/main.cfm?SID=185&L=U&facID=14

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How to cite this handout:

Wolford-Ulrich, J. (2006, April 6). Can we lead ourselves? Message posted to the Discussion listserv of the International Leadership Association, archived at http://listserv.umd.edu/.